You Feel OVERWHELMED Because You’re Focused on the Wrong Things

There are a million problems in every home service business, but figuring out which problem to solve is many times the hardest part. Every single day you have employee issues, customer issues, jobs are going wrong, equipment is falling apart. But figuring out what are the big dominoes, the big issues that if you were to solve them would allow the business to grow, that's the hard part. Today's video, I'm going to talk with 10 different entrepreneurs and we're going to discuss this whole problem and how to fix it.

Hi, Mike. My husband and I have been watching your videos. We started about 5 years ago because of COVID and my husband was like, why don't we start a lawn care company? So we did. So what happened is I decided to obsessively start to watch you and learn everything I possibly could. And it's been amazing. And so I realized we were undervaluing ourselves and our work. And so this winter, we were pricing a place and I was like, "Just, that's $150 right there." And he was like, "Well, usually it's $75." And I'm like, "Nope, we're just gonna go for it." And then it got easier from there. But, and I went out and I got the t-shirts and I threw one on and I just started from like an hour away, driving up to every house and every business. The last person that I talked to and handed out a flyer to, She actually is a property manager and she's going to give me 3 properties right now. And that is a mind-blowing thing right there to try to figure out how to be professional. I'm trying to learn so that maybe we can get certified as a woman-owned business. Yeah, it's all overwhelming. It's really super overwhelming. And so I wondered, my question is, should I give— she said that she wants it to be known that she's going to add 25% for her, um, upcharge or something when she presents. So we should just know that. And, um, I wondered if somehow maybe because she says she has like 12 other properties, somehow maybe I should like try to, you know, give her a like 5% discount or something.

Yeah, so she's, she's the middleman. She's, she is, she's subbing this workout to you. Yeah, I would not recommend taking the work. I think if you put your energy towards other things, you're going to grow the business better. That 25% that she's marking up is your profit. That's what she's going to go charge them. She's going to upcharge and get that work. And it's going to probably revenue-wise, it's going to look good to you. But I can almost guarantee, like, these, these relationships always end poorly and the middlemen just burn through to small contractors that are willing to do low, low profit margin work. And so, go ahead.

We kept our prices up. Like we made it our new high price. Okay.

Yeah. Then it's just a function of like, do they see the value in what you're doing? Like, I would not overthink whether or not you get this one contract. Like one contract, one customer has never saved me. And every single time I think I get a big one, I'm like, oh, it's going to change everything. And it always doesn't. Right? So like, I would never adjust the business based upon a customer, I would adjust the business based upon my goals. And so what I would be very careful of is being overwhelmed by this customer, by all these things that seem overwhelming, like technology, like changing the LLC. These are all things that can be overwhelming, or just, we just realize like this is part of doing business and being careful about labeling ourselves as not being able to know technology. Even when it comes to like women-owned businesses and things like that, there's no one ever been said that like, and they labeled themselves a woman-owned business and immediately their business took off to the moon. It's do you solve customers' problems and do you then deliver on that service at a high level and do you do it efficiently? That's the only thing that matters. And so I would be very careful about labeling yourself or thinking that doing so is going to lead to success, because the only thing that leads to success is doing work at a high quality, at a margin, and consistently. And so I think the steps you're making now, like even like upgrading the systems, the technology, upping your prices, all very good. Focus on those things 'cause you can control that. You can't control if she accept the job. You can't control whether or not the labels change, whether or not the LLS, like it doesn't matter. Just focus on what you can control and then you'll feel more in control because the things that you're actually working on, you can make a meaningful impact on. And so you can learn technology. Like I always think of, there's one owner inside Augustas, his name's Mike Cooper. He came training, he's like 60 years old. He came, I'm like, there is, I told the leadership team after, I'm like, I'm really concerned. from a technology perspective that he's gonna be able to pick things up. 'Cause we use a lot of software, not just like HomeWorks. We use Paid for Performance, we use QuickBooks, we have backend stuff for Command Center. We have a whole bunch of different apps. Like we have a lot of software. That guy now has 2 locations and uses AI probably more than me. That's— yesterday you saw all these Christmas lights, but taking photos of every single house, then just telling AI to put a certain type of lights on there and it would just send the client the, the text message with the picture. Like he crushed it. And he's like more into AI and stuff more than I am. And so I would just know that like technology is a skill that you can learn. And if you have the humility to know that you have a deficit, then you should be able to have the self-reflection to also gain that skill. So you can learn technology, you can learn how to change your prices, you can learn how to be professional and to just focus on those skills because that's a binary as to whether or not that's valuable to the business, whether or not it's valuable to have this customer or a label or the LLC being changed, maybe it'll help, but I don't know that for sure.

Yeah. Well, thank you.

So are you saying, what I hear you saying is focus on things that we can control that we know will make a difference and not so much things like that huge bid. 'Cause it's taken me like 2 days to put that together. It's 3 different commercial properties. My wife's been like grinding on this woman-owned business and grants and changing LLCs and, just looking for an edge.

Yeah, just ask yourself, the people that have got what you want and reached the goals that you aspire to have, if you ask any of them what made you successful, none of them are going to say it's because I got a grant for being a woman-owned business or I changed the LLC structure of my entity. None of them. They will say I, I had a great team, I had a great product, I found great customers, and I just focused on what I can control. And the thing that makes this really difficult is there's so many distractions that are out of your control. Politics, economics, Go down the list. You can't control any of that. What I can control is get enough customers so I can hit capacity and raise prices. And that's all I think about because I can control that. And the minute that you feel in control, you can actually take action. Because when you feel out of control, you stop taking action and things take 2 days to send an estimate.

Yeah. Yeah. So that, that sounds much more controllable what you just said.

I would take everything you're thinking about and all the problems and the things that you're like kind of like juggling. And I would just start asking yourself, can I actually move the needle on this in the next 24 hours. If no, off my plate.

Oh, okay. Yeah, so I guess, uh, kind of on another subject, and I know we're taking a while, we'll try to hurry, but, um, the reason my wife was looking into the woman-owned business grants is because we need to like add equipment, upgrade a truck, things like that, and our credit situation isn't to where we can just go out and get loans for those things. What would